Chapter 74: You Have to Be Responsible for What You Started
As he spoke, the hand Bai Ye had wrapped around Yun Sheng’s waist began to slowly move.
The scorching heat from his palm seeped through the fabric, pressing against the delicate skin of her waist.
The motion was filled with a powerful desire for control, unhurriedly stroking up and down along the curve of her waistline.
Yun Sheng went rigid, feeling as if all the blood had rushed to her head.
"What... what do you think you’re doing?"
Her voice carried a faint tremor she didn’t even notice as she tried to mask her panic with the question.
"What do I think I’m doing?"
Bai Ye chuckled lowly, tilting his head as his thin lips brushed against her cheek.
He stopped at the corner of her mouth but didn’t truly kiss her, merely teasing her with the faint, scorching touch of his breath.
"Last time, weren’t you the one who understood ’each taking what they need’ so well? You were the one who approached me, and you were also the one who used me and ran."
He pulled back slightly. His deep eyes were sharp as a blade, yet they also held the repressed frustration of being repeatedly provoked by someone he couldn’t grasp.
"I don’t know why you keep appearing in my dreams... But the fact is, every time you ’provoke’ me like this, the cracks in my spiritual landscape mend a little, and those damn rampages are suppressed."
Bai Ye locked his gaze onto Yun Sheng’s, giving her no room to look away.
"So what about you? What did you ’take’ from me? Power? Or something else?"
Yun Sheng’s heart pounded. Sensing danger, she subconsciously tried to push him away, but he only gripped her wrists tighter.
"Didn’t we agree to each take what we need? What, you don’t need anything this time?" Bai Ye’s voice grew cold. "Or did you use me once, decide it was enough, and now you want to cast me aside like a ’tool’?"
"I..."
Yun Sheng was speechless. Under his piercing gaze, any attempt at an explanation felt feeble.
"It seems you don’t intend to tell the truth." Bai Ye’s voice grew deep and cold. "Fine. If you won’t talk, then I’ll just have to... find out for myself."
The moment he finished speaking, he finally threw restraint aside, lowered his head, and captured her lips.
His kiss was hot and forceful, carrying a crisp, clean scent and an indescribable urgency. He was conquering, plundering, leaving her no room to retreat.
It wasn’t a gentle touch but an act of blatant possession and demand, as if he wanted to devour her whole and fuse her into his very being.
Yun Sheng’s breath was stolen away, her mind a complete blank.
Her hands pushed against his solid chest in protest, but she couldn’t move him at all.
Bai Ye’s pure, immense spiritual power, like a tsunami triggered by the kiss, began to surge wildly into her spiritual landscape.
The power was so immense, so turbulent, that it shattered her fragile defenses in an instant, forcing a muffled, whimpering groan from her lips.
The sound seemed to spur Bai Ye on.
His kiss grew deeper, more searing.
After the initial shock and passive acceptance, what little reason Yun Sheng had left began to scream.
’It’s too much! The power is flooding in too quickly, and there’s too much of it!’
’If this goes on, my spiritual landscape is going to explode...’
’I have to stop this!’
But in his current state, it was clear she couldn’t easily stop him.
He was like a savage beast, repressed for too long, that had finally found an outlet, greedily drinking in the solace she provided.
In her desperation, Yun Sheng steeled herself and tried her old trick again, biting down hard.
However, the result she expected never came.
His movements didn’t falter in the slightest. Instead, as if he’d been expecting it, the very instant she prepared to bite, the hand on her waist shot up, clamping around the nape of her neck like an iron pincer.
"Trying to bite me again?"
His lips parted from hers for a moment, pressing against them as he spoke, his voice raspy to its limits.
"The same trick. Did you really think I’d let you get away with it a second time?"
Before the words had even faded, Bai Ye crushed his lips against Yun Sheng’s once more, plundering every inch of her softness, stealing her very breath.
It was a punishing kiss, so domineering it left her no room to breathe.
Yun Sheng was trapped in a cage of his scent and power, unable to escape. Her breathing became difficult, and her mind spun from the lack of oxygen and the insane influx of immense spiritual power.
Bai Ye’s crisp, clean scent, mingled with an aggressive masculinity, completely overwhelmed her.
At the same time, an indescribable, soul-deep feeling of comfort and peace swept through Bai Ye’s spiritual landscape like a tidal wave.
The hidden pain and violent urges that had clung to him for years like maggots on bone were, in this moment, miraculously soothed and relieved.
This unprecedented comfort and deep, soul-felt satiation caused even Bai Ye’s formidable self-control to waver for the briefest of moments.
For just a fraction of a second, the strength in the arms holding Yun Sheng slackened.
In that instant, Yun Sheng seized the opportunity as if it were a lifeline.
Using the last of her strength, she snapped her knee up and drove it hard into the side of Bai Ye’s tense thigh!
He let out a muffled grunt. Caught off guard, the grip of his hands on her nape and waist faltered.
Yun Sheng seized the fleeting opportunity and, like a moth tearing free from a spiderweb, violently wrenched her consciousness from the terrifying, intoxicating whirlpool!
Bai Ye felt his arms suddenly go empty.
He looked down, but the person he had been holding had vanished without a trace.
In the pure white dreamscape, he was left standing all alone.
His military jacket had been thrown open during their fierce struggle, its lapels in disarray, revealing a sharply defined collarbone and a firm expanse of chest.
His breathing was still ragged, his hair damp against his forehead. A storm brewed in his deep eyes—unsated desire, the cold fury of being interrupted, and the sharp glint of a thoroughly roused need to conquer and comprehend.
Bai Ye raised a hand, slowly dragging the pad of his thumb across the corner of his mouth.
It felt as though the soft, cool touch of her lips still lingered there.
"Think you can run?" he muttered to himself. "I will find you... Don’t think you can escape me so easily again."
Next time, he would give her absolutely no chance to escape.
...
In her bedroom, Yun Sheng shot bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, her forehead slick with cold sweat.
She could feel that her spiritual landscape had never been so full; there was even a faint, aching pressure.
If she hadn’t completely exhausted her own spiritual power during the day, the immense spiritual power from Bai Ye that she’d just absorbed in the dream would have surely overflowed by now.
Yun Sheng looked down at her hands. Her fingertips seemed to be wreathed in an extremely faint, white glimmer.
Exactly like the white light of the Holy Light White Tiger!
’I’m done for.’
’This is big trouble.’
’It looks like I won’t be able to go outside until I learn how to assimilate all this spiritual power.’
’Otherwise, forget hiding from Bai Ye—even normal contact with other people might become a problem.’
’And as for the Star Alliance War God I thoroughly pissed off in the dream... what kind of tempest awaits when we next meet in reality?’
Yun Sheng clutched her throbbing head, feeling that her path forward was paved with thorns.